Feature Friday: Honor Roll, March 30, 1899

For the past year or so, I’ve been working on compiling a volume of items published in the early newspapers of Rabun Co., GA, namely The Clayton Argus (1894), The Tallulah Falls Spray (1897 – 1898), and The Clayton Tribune (1899). I finished the main body of the volume several weeks ago and am now working on an index. I have applied for a publishing grant through the R. J. Taylor, Jr. Foundation and, if accepted, I hope to have this volume published within the next few months.

To incite interest in the project, I decided to publish small excerpts every Friday from now through November, or possibly longer.

If you’re not familiar with the contents of historical newspapers or their usefulness to research, then you’re in for a real treat. Newspapers can provide not only proof of a relationship, but can also help place an ancestor into context with their community, an increasingly important aspect of genealogical research. There are many resources available, in print and online, to help interested individuals locate and use newspapers. One of the best comes from the Board for Certification of Genealogists‘ newsletter, OnBoard, and is called “Using Newspapers Effectively” by Shelia Benedict.

Here is a small item to get the ball rolling. It comes from the March 30, 1899 issue of The Clayton Tribune:

The average attendance of pupils
in school this week is twenty.
Several being out on account of
sickness.